Manny Rangel, a captain in the Phoenix Fire Department, has been climbing and developing routes in the area around the Oak Flat Campground, about 50 miles east of Phoenix, Arizona, since the climbing-rich resource was first discovered by climbers in the 1970s. It's since become a proving ground for some of the best American聽climbers.聽Rangel聽clearly recalls the 1996聽Phoenix Bouldering Championship, held at Oak Flat, which at the聽time was one of the world鈥檚 largest outdoor rock climbing competitions.聽During the event, a California kid who looked more like a surfer than a climber stepped up and slayed the more than 500 other entrants.

鈥淭here was this overhanging finger crack that definitely shut me down,鈥� Rangel said. 鈥淓ven some of our area鈥檚 strongest climbers couldn鈥檛 get. And then this kid just walks right up to it, doesn鈥檛 even breathe hard and he hikes it. Our jaws just dropped collectively.鈥澛燭hat kid was Chris Sharma. He was only 14 then, and took home the championship, a feat that represents his explosion onto the climbing scene.

Now, Oak Flat, which boasts about 500 sport climbs and more than 2,000 bouldering problems as well as a slew of traditional routes, is facing an existential threat.

In December of 2014, Arizona鈥檚 Congressional Delegation, spearheaded by Senator John McCain, inserted a rider into the National Defense Authorization Act, the annual must-past piece of legislation that funds the Department of Defense. The resolution handed over the title to 2,400 acres of land encompassing Oak Flat to a copper mining interest called Resolution Copper Mining, owned by British and Australian mining multinational corporation Rio Tinto. The mining company needed an Act of Congress to acquire the land because President聽Dwight Eisenhower's administration withdrew the Oak Flat Campground and surrounding area from mining considerations via Public Land Order 1229 in 1955.

Rio Tinto鈥檚 proposal includes plans to dig more than a mile beneath the earth to extract the precious metal. The process would聽cause the ground surface to sink into a large pit resembling a meteor crater about one-to-two miles wide and 1,000 feet deep, according to the . The lawmakers who pitched the resolution say聽the mine would create jobs and provide essential copper to the military. Officials at Tonto National Forest are now reviewing the proposal and are expected to begin hosting public hearings on it聽later this year.

But where lawmakers see an opportunity for resource extraction, climbers see the possibility of wiping one of the country鈥檚 best bouldering areas off the map.

鈥淚f this mine goes through it would be the biggest loss of a rock climbing resource in U.S. history,鈥� said Brady Robinson, executive director of the Access Fund, a nonprofit dedicated to fighting to keep rock climbing areas in the U.S.聽open and available.

The Access Fund isn鈥檛 the only outraged stakeholder group. The San Carlos Apache tribe, which claims the area in question as a sacred site, the local Sierra Club chapter, and the town council of Superior, situated just miles away from the proposed mine site, also oppose the mine. They cite the loss of recreation and the revenue that comes with having an influx of visitors, as well as the potential for environmental issues to emerge.

Plus, they say, the resolution that handed the land to the mining company creates a dangerous precedent. 鈥淵ou have a piece of legislation overturn a public land order that was created specifically to protect recreation and camping,鈥� says Curt Shannon, an Arizona resident and policy analyst for the Access Fund. 鈥淚f they can overturn that here, you can basically do that anywhere. What happens if they find a valuable mineral reserve under Yosemite?鈥�

Public Land Orders are one of the many executive orders that U.S. Presidents and heads of the Department of the Interior use to set aside and protect land. They鈥檝e been used to add to national parks, create national wildlife reserves, and augment national forest systems. Wind Cave National Park in South Dakota, the Bonneville Salt Flats in Utah, Taos Ski Valley in New Mexico, San Juan Archipelago in Washington, and many other public lands have all received protection.

The orders are most often executed by the Secretary of the Interior under the authority of the president, as was the case with Oak Flat.聽Orders function similarly to executive orders like the one President Obama employed last month to designate three new national monuments in Southern California. Most often they鈥檙e used to set aside recreationally significant areas within national forests to protect them from being used for timber, minerals, or other natural resource extraction. Basically, the orders exist to prevent exactly the type of proposal hovering above Oak Flat, which is why the environmental community so concerned.

鈥淎nything not explicitly protected by Congress could be turned over to a private company for economic exploitation,鈥� Shannon says. The Oak Flat resolution鈥檚 passage was underhanded, opponents say. 鈥淪omething like this, that鈥檚 very controversial, that would have failed on an up or down vote,鈥� Robinson says.聽“To聽sneak it into the National Defense Authorization Act is reprehensible.”

Whether the mine proposal is approved may hinge on economic arguments put forward by both sides.

In a , McCain lauded the mine as a means of bringing in 鈥渢housands of jobs and billions in economic activity for Arizona.鈥� Resolution Copper estimates there is a copper ore the size of a mountain beneath Oak Flat, . 鈥淭he Resolution Copper Mine Project has potential to produce 25 percent聽of U.S. copper demand by developing the largest copper deposit ever discovered in North America,鈥� McCain wrote.

Critics say that economic argument is shopworn and shortsighted. 鈥淭he whole jobs argument fundamentally denies the economic value of the land now and into the future,鈥� Robinson says. The lifespan of the mine is about 40 to 60 years, he says, after which nothing will remain aside from a mile-wide crater and a huge mountain of toxic mine tailings. 鈥淚f they truly cared about jobs they would invest in the long-term recreation economy,鈥� Robinson says. 鈥淭here鈥檚 this line you get about how extraction and mining, well that鈥檚 real business and recreation is just B.S.鈥�

Outdoor recreation is more sustainable, mine opponents say. The Outdoor Industry Association, the leading trade association of the outdoor industry, estimates that outdoor recreation in the state of Arizona alone, while providing 104,000 jobs in the state. A 2013 report from the Arizona Mining Association shows that mining contributes about half those numbers to the state economy. It provides a $4.87 billion impact to the economy while creating about $51,000 jobs according to the report.

The economic case for outdoor recreation leaves mine opponents with the hope they can turn the tide and convince enough people in the state to leave $16 billion worth of copper in the ground鈥攁n admittedly daunting prospect. Ultimately, the situation at Oak Flat can be viewed as a case study in our values as a society.

鈥淭owns like Superior have to find out what they want鈥攖o be a hub for outdoor recreation or another boom or bust mining town with bad drinking water,鈥� Robinson says.聽

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Assault rifles, knives, tactical vests, night vision goggles, infrared-monitoring devices. It sounds like the gear for a company deployed to a Middle Eastern war zone, right? Wrong. This bevy of aggressive military equipment belongs to the National Park Service, according to new information released in November. It鈥檚 enough to make one think some villainous entity plans a full-scale invasion of our park system.

The NPS quietly started acquiring high-end, military-grade weaponry from the U.S. Department of Defense 25 years ago. The initiative was part of the , which has distributed approximately $5 billion in military equipment to law enforcement agencies across the country since 1990. The initial goal was to bolster the police鈥檚 fight against drugs, but it was expanded in 1997 to let all agencies acquire military-grade equipment for 鈥渂ona fide law enforcement purposes.鈥�

The program’s come under fire recently as . The images from Ferguson showed a law enforcement force that looked more like a military unit in hostile foreign territory than local police. In response, President Barack Obama proposing to limit a law enforcement agency鈥檚 ability to get military equipment, but he stopped short of advocating to end the 1033 program.

While the general outline of the weapons giveaway initiative has been widely reported, it wasn鈥檛 until late November that the Pentagon released details on the 1033 program following intense pressure from the media and civil liberties organizations. , a nonprofit news outlet, the National Park Service has acquired roughly 4,100 pieces of equipment worth about $6 million since the program鈥檚 inception.

Some of these acquisitions make sense. Take , which used the program to procure 15 incandescent lamps. But what about Grand Canyon National Park, which obtained 20 military-style M-16 assault rifles and 70 rifle sights?聽

Then there’s Yosemite. The park procured nearly $435,000 worth of military equipment, most of which is related to assembly parts for standard-issue rifles, including 103 gun barrels, 163 breech bolts, and 500 magazines. It also received 50 handguns and eight laser-infrared observation sets worth a total of $176,000. The net worth of the park’s acquisitions exceeded that of nearby city departments such as Merced, Modesto, Riverside, and Stockton (named by Forbes as ).

The list goes on. The Pentagon gifted the park service鈥檚 Southeast Arizona Group, which includes Coronado National Monument, Fort Bowie National Historic Site and Chiricahua National Monument, two assault rifles and 15 bayonet knives. Glen Canyon in Arizona received six assault rifles. Natchez Parkway in Mississippi got nine.

Some people, including Jeff Olson, spokesman for the National Park Service in Washington D.C., say law enforcement rangers absolutely need the weapons. The cutting-edge gear is crucial as the units patrol a system of parks that gets about 400 million visitors per year, he says. Others, citing government and watchdog reports argue that the weapons lead to an unnecessarily militarized park service.

Granted, these bastions of wild serenity aren鈥檛 crime-free. In 2012, a gunman murdered a ranger at Mount Rainer National Park before fleeing into the backcountry. The next year, there were 3,779 violent crimes within the national parks, according to data from the National Park Service. Eighty-two percent of those incidents were theft-related, but there were also 14 homicides, 36 rapes, seven kidnappings, 141 aggravated assaults, and 53 arson incidents. Attacks and threats against federal employees in parks, wildlife refuges, and marine sanctuaries increased 40 percent from 2011 to 2012, according to a report released in June. Four NPS rangers have been murdered over the past 16 years. Rifles, shotguns, pistols are standard-issue for all commissioned law enforcement officers, says Olson. Why should rangers be held to a different standard?聽

In parks such as in Yosemite, rangers are the only law enforcement in the area. 鈥淵osemite is clearly not the same type of law enforcement situation you find in large urban areas, but our rangers do encounter some situations that impact our need for equipment,鈥� says Yosemite National Park Spokesman Scott Gediman. 鈥淲e need to have resources for a lot of different scenarios. Assault rifles are not one of the resources we use on a daily basis, but we do need to be prepared.鈥�

But it鈥檚 unclear whether the National Park Service鈥檚 growing cache of military-grade weaponry is an effective measure against the threats employees face. Civil liberties organizations critical of police militarization argue that the increasing stockpile of weaponry endangers citizenry and also reduces officer safety as it leads to a confrontational style of policing.聽

鈥淲hile we support smart policing strategies designed to keep our streets safe, the militarized response that we saw in Ferguson undermines police-community relations and puts everyone at risk,鈥� the American Civil Liberties Union and 35 other organizations wrote in a letter to. The group聽urged an immediate moratorium on the 1033 program.聽

The National Park Service鈥檚 growing arsenal is framed by athat found the United States Park Police maintained 鈥渁 disconcerting attitude toward firearms accountability.鈥� The report found that law enforcement staff within the USPP had no clear idea of how many weapons they maintained because of poorly managed inventory.

鈥淲e discovered hundreds of handguns, rifles, and shotguns not accounted for on official USPP inventory records,鈥� the report reads. It states that in many cases, USPP employees accepted large numbers of weapons from other federal agencies without proper documentation.

The report also revealed that the NPS’ own handbook explicitly limits the agency鈥檚 ability to acquire firearms 鈥渢o the minimum needed for an effective law enforcement program.鈥� The issue is that there is no objective third-party standard. Defining the minimum needed for an 鈥渆ffective law enforcement program鈥� is left to the discretion of the law enforcement personnel and park superintendents.

As the details of the Pentagon鈥檚 1033 program continue to emerge, the 鈥淛ust Trust Us鈥� mentality of law enforcement agencies in relation to the weaponry necessary for effective law enforcement is insufficient鈥攅ven for the park rangers we鈥檝e grown up trusting.聽

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